Why has the PC not evolved?

Sand

The only people I have heard talking about the death of the PC gaming scene lately are Epic, who havent released a good game since Unreal Tournament [ 1999...] and who still cant face the fact, so are off in a huff to arenas where their genius will be appreciated by people that hail Halo as awesome.

The PC doesnt need to evolve in reaction to consoles, as its the platform most open to innovation anyway - if anything, consoles are aping the PC, trailing in its wake with "innovations" like high definition graphics [ so higher than 800*640 then lads? Well done], internet connections, post release patching and hard drives.

magick

actually i think games should be released on pc first (now its not gonna happen cos the all important pot o gold is found in consoles).

But i think releasing a game onto the pc platform first would be best because of the feedback givin by the people who would play the games/spot bugs and come up with helpful hints to fix it.

bizmark

MooseJam wrote: »

ok thats a bit of an exaggeration I'm sure there are many thousands out there

Oh come on thousands? id hate to come back to this as im an eve online fan boy but lets take wow's player base thats 10 million people right there paying 15 euro a month for their game and thats only 1 game how many other people play paying mmo's? another 5-10mil maybe? and thats only a part of the pc's gamer base do you really think all of them or even the majority pirate all their non mmo game's? i would be really suprised if 15-20% did a high number i grant you but not crippleing something that the move to digital distrabution will cut down on anyway's.

Now clearly all these people might not be buying lots of other game's (same that a lot of console owners appear to not bother buying many game's) but im just use's it as an example of the share number's of potental customer's on pc and the foolishness of thinking most pc gamer's are pirateing their heart's out

interesting, have you got a link ?

here

also according to wiki and gameradar

Sales

As of June 27, 2008, Crysis has beaten EA's expectations and sold 1.5 million copies worldwide, according to a gamesradar article.

This is a game thats held up as some sort of poster child for game's screwed by pirates yet they more than likely made a quite healthy profit admittedly not halo 3/gta 4 levels or anything like that but quite healthy im not saying it couldnt of sold more its just not OMG TEH PIRATES ARE PUTTING US OUT OF BUSINESS doom and gloom level's of sale's loss's

challengemaster

You're asking why don't we change pc's into consoles/same as consoles. Pretty much...

Doodee

I wasn't arsed reading most of page one so im not sure if anyone has said this already

Developers are trying to reach the widest markets possibly, so it makes sense to have 'Non-pc exclusive titles'. They are different classes in quite a diverse industry.
Porting requires a lot of money and time, so naturally stuff will be developed on either the PC or console first and then ported over to the other. It keeps both sides of the table salivating over the others cookie and allows for revenues to be planned etc..
Also look at any PC exclusives that eventually became ports (HL, TF2, Crysis, Sims, C&C). One good example was just mentioned, Crysis, which has to be optimized and stripped down heavily in order to make it onto the console. The Cryengine 2 was designed for longetivity, and as was announced earlier in the week its follow on won't appear until 2012, so thats atleast 4 more years for the pc!

or something along those lines. Consoles and Gaming PC's will be around for a long time yet.

the_syco

Sabre0001 wrote: »

So why has the PC not tried to develop a similar system for those that are this way inclined?

May be reading it wrongly, but the console are popular as you don't need to know anything about computers, let alone the basics of an advanced OS to run the games. By "Advanced OS", I mean anything from command line to GUI, as opposed to the OS on, say, an Xbox.

With PC's, though, there's a new graphics card out every few weeks, and they bring new problems, but also new angles for games. With an Xbox, it's the same hardware, nothing changes. No complications.

MooseJam wrote: »

I'd say in time there will be no more major games released on pc and it will just be budget titles left

M$ have said in the past that Xbox 360 games will be playable on Vista. Although not possible yet, the way the Xbox is going, I'd say it will be. Not likely soon, as the Xbox is PowerPC, and a PC is x86, etc, so not too soon, but maybe on the horizon?

If the PC market died, the console market would take longer to pass it out.

Dyr

Funny that you mention pirating, the things thats killing PC gaming for me is copy protection software IMO, Ive gone out and bought an xbox because im sick of games f****ing up on my PC due to securom and the likes. The only thing that keeps me hanging on is the poxiness of a controller in comparison to a keyboard and mouse for some games.


Actually, If i was to put my tin foil hat on I'd say that vista is microsofts attempt to kill the PC game off.:pac:


Another thing to bear in mind is that many PC games nowadays seem to be ports of xbox versions so they no longer play to the PC formats unique strengths. Whats the point in buying them then?

Benzino

Bambi wrote: »

Funny that you mention pirating, the things thats killing PC gaming for me is copy protection software IMO

Yeah, but if there was no pirating, companies wouldn't have to take such extreme and unbelievably annoying measures.

Sand

Such extreme measures are apparently totally ineffective [ oh noes! pirates are stealing mah gold!] and serve only to punish and irritate legitimate buyers. I have had to at least once get an illegal cd crack to allow me to play a game I bought legitimately. The guys who stole the game didnt have any issues getting it to accept it should run I am betting.

A piracy download isnt necessarily a lost sale - peoples demand for "free" stuff is higher than if they are asked to cough up 40 euro for it. Especially if its a ****e game.

CyberGhost

Like mentioned already, Xbox = PC simplified.

Personally, I like the PC scene as it is, if only there were no copy protections and other crap involved, it would've been perfect.

Shiminay

Why has the PC not evolved?

Same reason Humans haven't in several thousand years - we're at the top.

When one considers just how much stuff is dependant on PCs in this world, you have to realise that making a major change to the way they work/are built/how they run would have catastrophic knock on effects across the world. Consoles - sure they can do what they like.

We, the gamers are one of if not the biggest driving force behind faster and more powerful tech. The people who make things have only realised that in the last 3 or 4 years. Was chatting with DeV last week about this and he was saying how he was more or less laughed at 10 years ago when looking for sponsorship from the companies that are now the main stay sponsors of any gaming related event (Intel, Creative, the ISPs etc). So we've had a major hand in the implementation of things like multi-core chips (a trend I see growing into most components), GDDR (it's at v.5 now isn't it with the new ATIs?) the physics card, etc. Whilst doing all this though, the software people have gone completely backwards and have dumbed everything down and made themselves into massive drains on available hardware resources - and for what? A flashy interface that is completely pointless and even more baffling to use. I think Microsoft had the interface nailled with Windows 3.11.

So, to my point:
I think if there's to be evolution, it's to be done with software. The hardware is more or less set in stone. There's room to manouver within it, but you're always gonna have a bus, a chip, ram, etc configured in certain ways.

User45701

i dont see how pc games are dying, i mean ive had both but ive always thought pc's where better. I can see how a sport or driver gamer might like console because they are better for that but pc is better for FPS & stratagy games *(and role playing games as well) They are easyier to controll,

not to mention mods, i mean i havent seen any mods for download for ps3 or xbox game (then again i havent looked or tried, why wouldi bother.)

I mean why does the Pc need to evolve?
We could do with companies taking a more short term interest in things than the long term proffit projections based on X (being whatever as in if we dont fix such an such a problem x amount of people will need to buy x)

Slutmonkey57b

Kharn wrote: »

We, the gamers are one of if not the biggest driving force behind faster and more powerful tech..... Whilst doing all this though, the software people have gone completely backwards and have dumbed everything down and made themselves into massive drains on available hardware resources - and for what? A flashy interface that is completely pointless and even more baffling to use. I think Microsoft had the interface nailled with Windows 3.11.

So, to my point:
I think if there's to be evolution, it's to be done with software. The hardware is more or less set in stone. There's room to manouver within it, but you're always gonna have a bus, a chip, ram, etc configured in certain ways.

While I'll disagree about Win 3.11 being the "perfect" interface (!!), it's difficult to look at Vista and not think "Exactly why did you fu.ck around with Windows Explorer??" Probably the best, most obvious and most functional file manager on any OS, and they Mac-ify it for absolutely no good f'ing reason, making it significantly LESS functional in the interests of having oooh, a sliding bar to change from Icon to List view?

I don't necessarily agree that you'll always have the same fundamental hardware architecture though - but that really doesn't matter as the hardware is now increasingly abstracted from the software that runs on it anyway. Essentially, a Windows PC with Direct X is very close to being platform-agnostic in hardware terms. (Linux being the opposite, what with **** hardware support)

PogMoThoin

Benzino wrote: »

Because people are downloading illegal copies.

1 out of every 4 users playing cod 4 online (on the pc) is doing so on an illegal copy.

Complete BS, Where did you come with that statistic?
I pay for very few games, but this one I paid for cos I couldn't play online without a legit serial, everyone had to buy the game for online play. Single player is what was pirated. Its also a different story with Crysis, this was heavily pirated, but the online was crap. IMO a game must have good online play or else it'll be pirated.

Benzino

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Complete BS, Where did you come with that statistic?
I pay for very few games, but this one I paid for cos I couldn't play online without a legit serial, everyone had to buy the game for online play. Single player is what was pirated. Its also a different story with Crysis, this was heavily pirated, but the online was crap. IMO a game must have good online play or else it'll be pirated.

Eh, I know and I have seen people play COD 4 online with an illegal copy. It's not very difficult, they get kicked off the odd time when the legitimate owner of the cd key logs on, but then they just use a key gen to get another one and they are back on within minutes.

As for the stat, I was told it from somebody who worked on it and is working/involved in some way with cod5. While they didn't release any stats, here is a link regarding Infinity Wards concern over it.

Cunny-Funt

man, that bollocks tbh. Sure a lot off people may have downloaded COD4 but they wouldn't be playing it online. Not fkin 1 in 4 anyway.

1 in 20 maybe if not more.

cherryghost

i dont think the one in four claim isnt that far off. in about a group of 20 of us, about four of us own COD4. and about 5 of the non-owners play online. despite it all, COD4 on the PC has claimed over 2.5 million sales alone when the 10 million mark was announced from all platforms. sure, 7.5 million go to the 360/PS3, i dont its not that bad if you look at the big picture, taking this into context. be certain for spore and fallout 3 to reach sales milestones too

Azza

Just curious cherry where did you get those PC sales figures for COD 4?

Cuddlesworth

Azza wrote: »

Just curious cherry where did you get those PC sales figures for COD 4?

I'm curious too, they released figures for the 360 and ps3 but never for the pc.

cherryghost

well as they released the 360 and ps3 numbers and they claimed 10 millions was sold in total, its a matter of doing the math as to find out how many pc sales were shifted then :P

Cuddlesworth

cherryghost wrote: »

well as they released the 360 and ps3 numbers and they claimed 10 millions was sold in total, its a matter of doing the math as to find out how many pc sales were shifted then :P

There was a 4 month gap between the release figures for the 360 and ps3 and the announcement of the 10 million mark. In fact there was some debate over the likely hood that the 10 million was simply the console sales.

cherryghost

prove it and ill apologize

MooseJam

well I bought it for the PC so thats definately 1 sale

PogMoThoin

MooseJam wrote: »

well I bought it for the PC so thats definately 1 sale

+1
and I buy very little. I'll buy Crysis Warhead as its the decider for Crytek for whether it stays pc only. I'll also buy Battlefield 3 cos the online's also good.

yoyo

PC sales are actually better than the companies/devs/sales forcasts state. The problem with pc games is generally you have Online digital download sales, this could be through direct to drive, Steam, etc... You then have the smaller portion being retail sales. The problem is these "statistic" sites only record information on purchases made retail (as digital figures arn't disclosed by d2d or steam afaik) so overall make the games look like the sold poorly, when in fact for the market concerned, the sales wouldn't be bad. Crysis also sold very well over a million copies, considering that most computers in this planet couldn't run it properly...

Nick

Genghiz Cohen

But PC has evolved.
Single core processing -> Multi threading -> hyper threading -> Dual Core -> Quad Core -> Sept(6) Core (Coming soon)
SD -> SD DDR -> SD DDR2 -> SD DDR 3 (coming soon)
Graphics cards have been paired up by SLI/Crossfire.
Physics cards were a branch in PC evolution, but they seem to have died off

So the PC is constantly changing and is still the most versatile and powerful platform available.

gamer

THATS the problem ,gaming pc s are constantly changing,people get fed up,having to buy a new card to play the latest game ,so alot of people say,ill just get a console,it run games in hd at at least 30frames per second,on a 32inch tv ,if you can afford to buy a hd tv.AFTER 5months you can get most 360 games for 20euros,so pc games are not really cheaper than 360 games ,if you can wait that long.But theres loadsa free mods for example ,for halflife 2,and pc developers sometimes release free maps,levels to download so once you buy a pc ,you get good value from it.
Theres a wide range of mmos, casual/puzzle games which will never be released on console.IN my opinion certain games ,mmos ,rts ,s cannot be played on console,so there will always be a pc gaming market,if you,r a hardcore online fps fan the pc has a wider range of games avaidable ,eg counterstrike .
THE xbox is just a standardised pc ,ie buy the elite and thats it ,it doesnt need upgrading ,it has ,usb,ethernet,hardrive ,like a pc .ITS just easy to make games for,as theres not a new graphics card,or cpu released for the 360 every month.
IT looks as if the ps3 ,and 360 have another 3 years left ,as both companys made hugh financial investments in both consoles,and i see no harm in that
as the market needs stability.
ONE of the bad things for gaming is the intel graphics cards ,as the are not fast enough to run many pc games properly.
YOU can build your own pc ,dual core,2gig ram ,8800card for less than 500euro, and that,ll last you another 3years in terms of playing the latest games.

nealmac

The thing is, PC's are made to suit individual users. So making them like a "console" would be daft.